Huge soil consumption is one of the main factors of degradation at a global level: “Soil consumption implies its fragmentation with artificial elements that constitute real barriers in terms of connectivity of the ecological network” [1]. Deciding what is meant and what should be classified as ‘consumed’ soil is crucial both for understanding how to detect and measure the phenomenon and for identifying strategies and actions to govern it [2]. With this in mind, the contribution intends to investigate the reasons and risks of pathological urban sprawl by evaluating new mitigation and compensation tools. In particular, NBS (Nature Based Solutions) must become key resources both to base land governance on soil protection principles and to mitigate the effects of climate change and its impacts on people, such as extreme events and heat waves, and to reduce pollution through reforestation and renaturation of the city. The “inhabited organisms” will have to orient themselves towards new rules of architecture-nature, to measure themselves against new technologies and new regulations, to find new forms of identity in relation to climate, exposure, the varied vegetation of places, landscape and culture. Every place, every space, every city will therefore have a forest that is different in shape, height, plants, etc., but also because the inhabitants who inhabit these living organisms will contribute to building it by imbuing it with their own culture and identity. How to do this will be the challenge of our century.